Hands-on music learning hits right note

At 95 years old, Geoffrey D’Ombrain’s passion for music is still strong.

The Wendouree resident has received a Medal of the Order of Australia for service to music and to education.

D’Ombrain was founding head for the Melbourne State College’s department of music, and the co-director of Pirra Arts Centre in Lara.

Over a period of 12 years, he composed and performed music for the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery. For a short period, he was conductor of the Ballarat U3A Performance Choir.

D’Ombrain said the curriculum he created at the college engaged students because of its hands-on approach.

“My whole idea was to have music taught like art so that people actually made music rather than just sat there and sang songs and listened to records,” he said.

He placed an emphasis on making students comfortable with musical notation while providing them with instruments and encouraging them to make their own music.

“I would just simply move around for whoever needed help,” he said. “In a funny kind of way I almost became redundant because they were so motivated.”

He said the community work he conducted was about connecting people to the brilliance that was music.

“I want them to feel the joy of creating and always I try to work at the level that they are possible to reach but not an impossible one that makes them feel uneasy and unsettled,” he said.

“So that’s my whole basis of what everything I do is to feel the joy of creating music and dance and poetry and whatever other art form it might be.”

He said he felt honoured to receive the OAM. He wanted to acknowledge the late Janet McCulloch OAM who invited him to do the concerts in the gallery and the musicians and friends who joined him in these concerts, in particular three Ballarat musicians: Alison Robertson, Katherine Saunders and Heather George.